It’s Aaron Paul’s Turn to Chase After a Mysterious Gone Girl in the Poky Thriller ‘Come and Find Me’

November 8, 2016

Most like-minded films spend approximately twenty minutes on the same material covered by the entirety of Come and Find Me — a fact that leaves this mystery from writer/director Zack Whedon (brother of Joss) feeling insufferably drawn out.

Photographer Claire (Annabelle Wallis) has vanished, and her boyfriend David (Aaron Paul) becomes consumed with tracking her down — and maybe discovering her secrets. His search turns strange when one of Claire’s friends begins tearing up his house — and hits David in the head with a hammer — while looking for something he won’t identify to David.

Though Whedon’s visual eye is sharp and Paul’s performance has just enough feverish desperation to sell his character’s missing-persons hunt, the sleuthing plays out in too few tense or anxious scenarios, and the truths David eventually uncovers, all of which revolve around a shady government agent (Garret Dillahunt), are of a cliché, sub–Mission: Impossible variety.

Cutaways to David and Claire’s prior happier times don’t help matters, given that they all feature glaring warning-sign moments that undercut any suspense about what’s really going on. No matter that the couple bonded by scribbling lovey-dovey messages to each other on their townhouse’s ceiling, these flashbacks suggest that the real reason David was abandoned by his paramour was because he was too dim to see the “I’m not who I say I am” writing on the wall.